Chapter 6: The Digital Ghost

Liam had lasted exactly four hours in the house after the encounter with fake-Dan before he'd thrown some clothes into a bag and driven straight to Chloe's parents' place across town. He'd shown up on their doorstep at 11 PM, probably looking like he'd escaped from somewhere, and managed to convince them he was having "work stress" and just needed to crash for a few days while Chloe wrapped up her current project.

Now, two days later, he was sitting in the Petersons' guest room while Chloe worked at her laptop downstairs, finally feeling like he could think clearly for the first time in weeks. The house—their house—felt like a fever dream from this distance, a collection of impossible memories that seemed less and less real with each passing hour.

"Maybe you were right," he'd told Chloe that morning over breakfast. "Maybe I do need to see someone. A therapist or something."

She'd smiled and squeezed his hand, the relief in her eyes obvious. "I think that's a really good idea. There's no shame in getting help when you're overwhelmed."

But even as he'd agreed to make an appointment, even as he'd started accepting the rational explanation for everything that had happened, one question kept nagging at him: the photograph. The image he'd taken in the hallway, which had shown moving eyes in the window's reflection before they'd mysteriously disappeared.

Digital photos didn't just change themselves. Files didn't alter their own content based on the viewer's psychological state. If he'd captured something impossible in that image, then it should still be there, regardless of his mental health or stress levels.

He'd been avoiding looking at the photo for two days, afraid of what he might or might not find. But now, sitting in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the guest room window, he finally worked up the courage to examine it properly.

Liam pulled out his phone and opened the camera roll, scrolling back to that night. His hands were steadier now, his breathing more controlled. Whatever was in that image, he would face it head-on and deal with the consequences.

The photograph loaded, showing the empty hallway exactly as he remembered—stark white flash illumination revealing nothing more sinister than beige walls and a hardwood floor. He zoomed in on the window at the far end, the one where he'd seen those round, watching eyes.

The glass was clear, reflecting only the opposite wall. No eyes, no movement, nothing that shouldn't be there. Just a perfectly normal reflection in a perfectly normal window.

Liam stared at the screen for a long moment, feeling something that might have been relief or disappointment. The rational explanation was winning. His memories were faulty, his perceptions compromised by stress and sleeplessness. The supernatural elements were just his mind's way of processing the ordinary anxieties of homeownership and mortgage payments.

He was about to close the photo when something made him look more carefully at the reflection in the window glass.

The image quality was poor—flash photography always created harsh contrasts and blown-out highlights—but if he squinted and adjusted the brightness, he could make out more details in the reflected scene. The wall behind him, the doorway to their bedroom, and...

His blood turned to ice.

There, barely visible in the reflection, was a figure standing behind him. Tall, impossibly thin, with limbs that seemed too long and a head tilted at an unnatural angle. It was positioned exactly where he would have been standing when he took the photograph, but it wasn't him.

The thing in the reflection had no face that he could make out, just a smooth expanse where features should be. But even without eyes or mouth, its posture conveyed a sense of intense focus, as if it were studying him with predatory interest.

Liam's hands began to shake as he zoomed in further, trying to get a clearer look at the impossible figure. The image pixelated as he increased the magnification, but the basic shape remained consistent—something that definitely wasn't human standing directly behind him in that hallway.

"It was real," he whispered to the empty room. "It was all real."

But even as he said it, a new fear crept into his mind. If the entity was real, if it had been in that hallway with him, then why hadn't he seen it at the time? He'd looked behind him before opening the door, had checked the entire length of the hallway before raising his phone to take the picture.

Unless...

Unless it had been invisible to his naked eye, but somehow visible to the camera's electronic sensor. Or unless it existed in some other dimension that only intersected with reality under specific conditions.

As he stared at the figure in the reflection, it seemed to shift slightly, as if responding to his scrutiny. The head moved, tilting further to one side, and what might have been an arm lifted in what could have been a wave.

Liam jerked the phone away from his face, heart hammering. That wasn't possible. Digital photographs were static images, frozen moments in time. They didn't move, didn't respond to the viewer, didn't wave back when you looked at them.

But when he forced himself to look at the screen again, the figure's position had definitely changed. It was facing him now, head tilted in that bird-like way that suggested curiosity or amusement.

"No," he said out loud. "No, no, no. This isn't happening."

The thing in the reflection seemed to hear him. Its featureless face turned slightly, as if cocking its head to listen, and then it began to move forward through the reflected space. Not walking exactly, but flowing like liquid shadow, growing larger as it approached the surface of the window glass.

Liam tried to close the photo app, but his fingers wouldn't obey him. He could only watch in horror as the entity moved closer and closer to the camera's perspective, its impossible form filling more and more of the reflection until it was pressed against the inside surface of the glass like something trapped in a mirror.

Then it raised what might have been a hand and pressed it against the glass from the other side.

The phone screen flickered, just for a moment, and when it stabilized, the reflection had changed again. Now the entity wasn't in the window glass at all—it was standing in the hallway itself, in the same space where Liam had been standing when he took the photograph.

And it was looking directly at the camera.

"Hello, Liam," a voice said.

Not from the phone's speakers—from behind him, in the guest room. He spun around, expecting to see that impossible tall figure standing in the doorway, but the room was empty. Sunlight streamed peacefully through the windows, dust motes dancing in the afternoon air.

When he looked back at the phone, the screen was black. Not displaying the photograph anymore, but completely dark, as if the device had powered down. He pressed the home button, but nothing happened. The screen remained stubbornly blank despite the phone being fully charged just minutes before.

"Liam?" Chloe's voice came from downstairs. "Everything okay up there? I thought I heard you talking to someone."

"I'm fine," he called back, though his voice cracked on the words. "Just... making some calls."

He tried the home button again, then the power button, but the phone remained dead. It wasn't until he held down both buttons for a hard reset that the device finally showed signs of life, the Apple logo appearing on the screen as it rebooted.

While he waited for it to restart, Liam tried to process what he'd just experienced. The figure in the reflection, moving and responding to his attention. The voice speaking from behind him in an empty room. The phone mysteriously losing power at the exact moment the encounter reached its peak.

None of it made sense from a rational perspective. But then, very little about his recent experiences could be explained through conventional logic.

The phone finished booting up, and Liam immediately opened the camera roll, scrolling back to the photograph from that night in the hallway. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely navigate the interface, but he managed to find the image and tap it open.

The hallway looked exactly as it had when he'd first examined the photo weeks ago—empty, normal, revealing nothing more supernatural than shadows cast by the camera flash. The window at the far end showed only the reflection of the opposite wall, clear and unremarkable.

But now he knew the truth. The entity wasn't gone—it was just hiding, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. It existed in the spaces between perception and reality, in the gaps where electronic devices captured more than the human eye could see.

And somehow, impossibly, it had learned to move through digital space. To inhabit photographs and manipulate electronic devices and speak through the empty air of rooms it had never physically entered.

"Liam?" Chloe appeared in the doorway, her expression concerned. "You look pale. Are you feeling alright?"

He looked up at her, this woman he loved more than anything else in the world, and realized he had a choice to make. He could tell her everything—about the entity, about the photograph, about the voice that had spoken from thin air. He could show her the evidence, try to convince her that something impossible was stalking them through digital space.

Or he could protect her from a truth that would shatter her rational worldview and pull her into a nightmare she didn't deserve.

"Just tired," he said, closing the phone and slipping it into his pocket. "Maybe I should take a nap."

But even as he spoke the words, he knew sleep wouldn't come. How could it, when he was carrying a digital parasite in his pocket? When the thing that had been haunting their house had apparently followed him across town, traveling through fiber optic cables and wireless signals to continue its slow, patient stalking?

The entity had escaped the physical confines of the house, and now it lived in the vast network of interconnected devices that formed the backbone of modern life. His phone, his laptop, every camera and microphone and screen he encountered—they were all potential windows for something that existed in the spaces between reality and digital representation.

As Chloe left him alone in the guest room, Liam stared at his phone and wondered if he would ever feel safe using technology again. The device felt heavier in his hands, as if it were carrying more than just data and applications.

It was carrying a passenger.

And that passenger was learning.